A man took his girlfriend last week for an afternoon at the Denver Zoo. He did not make it home.

He died just outside the pen where they keep the elephants, after being Tasered by Denver police officers and zoo security men. He was taken to the morgue.

The man, Alonzo Ashley, had not pulled a weapon. He did not take a zebra, a monkey or anyone hostage. No, becoming delirious in the sweltering heat of July 18, he put his head in a fountain to cool off.

This apparently is a violation of zoo rules. Security told him to stop it. Moments later, the 29-year-old man was dead.

Alonzo Ashley was black.

White men, and you could look this up, do not get killed by police or security guards.

Yet, it is what happens to black men in Denver, over and over and over again. I haven’t the stomach to do a recounting of the grisly list. I trust you have been paying attention.

What happens, too, every time another black person is killed by Denver police, a protest rally is held. I have been to so many, I have lost count.

They held one for Alonzo Ashley just outside the front gates of the zoo on Friday. The faces were all familiar: ministers, activists, agitators, old men and women who now even hoist protest signs, things have gotten so bad.

I stood next to Selina Gonzales, 28, and her 1-year-old daughter, Zacari. She had known the dead man for seven years.

“He definitely did not deserve what they did,” she said before the speech-making began. “It was not right. It was not fair. He was not the monster they are portraying him to be.”

Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson said Ashley was out of control and had exhibited extraordinary strength. The zoo says he attacked, tackled and even bit their security guards.

So you . . . kill him?

The Rev. Patrick Demmer of Graham Memorial Community Church took a spot near me after he gave his remarks. We are old hands at these events.

I asked him what he thought would happen next. The two of us almost laughed. Of course we know the routine:

Denver police will conduct an investigation. They will find that not one of the officers violated policy. The district attorney, too, will conclude there is not one provable charge that can be filed.

“At the end of the day,” the reverend said, “nothing will be done.”

Pastor Reginald Holmes has been fighting back against police abuses through his Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance for nearly a decade now.

I first met him in 2003, in the days following the killing of Paul Childs, a developmentally disabled teenager, who was gunned down by Denver police in the front door of his mother’s home.

You could see the weariness in his eyes, hear the pain in his words. Law enforcement, he said, is sending a clear and concise message to the black community: We do not value your life.

“He was killed at the zoo!” Holmes bellowed. “In our first-class city, at our first-class zoo, the life of a polar bear is more precious than the life of a black man. Is black life not even valued at the zoo?”

We don’t know what really happened yet.

It astounded me that so many people at the rally kept saying this over and over. In Denver, we should be long past giving police any benefit of the doubt in such needless killings.

How many fathers, brothers, sons and husbands have to die, how many more funerals and rallies will there have to be before honest and true change in this city arrives?

Sadly, here is what will happen next, too:

The Ashley family will hire a lawyer. The city, which never goes to court because it knows systemic problems exist that could cost it a fortune, will settle.

The City Council again will wail and promise change — for sure this time! — as it cuts yet another settlement check.

A couple of months later, a different black body will lie in a morgue.

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